Blog Archives
Workout Wednesday – Conditioning
About this time last year, Jaxon decided that he really wasn’t interested in Agility anymore. I couldn’t understand why a puppy who had loved going to training & playing on the equipment now had no interest whatsoever. At every occasion, he decided running away would be a better option. I felt pretty sad for him, and guilty that I was trying to get him to do things he didn’t want to do. Then it receded to a point where he wouldn’t jump at all, and then I clicked something was wrong.
We’re Back!
We’ve had an extended leave of absence from the blog, and now we’re back!
The exciting news is we haven’t stopped Agility – we’ve just been hard at it.
The back end of the year saw us focus on European handling techniques, and start to get really confident and fast!
In 2015, we will return with a full schedule to entertain and inform you.
In the meantime, Thank You to all our faithful fans who have been awaiting our return!
Here is a little something to celebrate our first year of trialling in Agility – 2014.
All the best for a very Happy New Year!
The AgilityPap team – Frankie & Jaxon (aka SuperPap)
Workout Wednesday – Rest and recovery
Recovery session at the beach!
Each week we bring you training ideas for you and your puppy. We are 100% believers of short and fun training sessions, and we usually train a couple of times a day on foundation skills, with 2 larger sessions a week for Agility and Jumping. As with any sport, it’s also important to know when to rest and recover.
Discovery Monday – back to the beginning
Look at me – I’m so cute!
The lyrics of the Coldplay song The Scientist come to mind after our trial on the weekend:
/Nobody said it was easy/
/No one ever said it would be this hard/
/Oh take me back to the start/
That’s right – Mr. Snifftastic came out to play on Saturday. We attended the Agility Dog Club of NSW (ADC) and started the day well. In RQH Jumping we had one fault – Jaxon popped the weaves at the 10th weave, which was most likely my fault. Otherwise we had a fun run & a great start to a cold morning.
Disaster struck in our second run. Of course it was Novice Agility (AD).
Agility News Friday – Learning the ropes
Going through the tyre! Photo courtesy of Le Hammer.
When people ask me what sport I like, I tend to talk about 2 things – Formula 1 and my love of Agility.
As a sport, it’s a very different road than your average sport on a Thursday night. Touch football, netball, Futsal (which I also love), and such are generally the team sports that get mentioned by the water cooler.
The next question people ask is – What is Agility?
To that I reply the most awesome fun you can have with a dog – ever! But really, what is Agility?
Workout Wednesday – TOTO
We’re not going to be talking about the Wizard of Oz today, but one of the more interesting foundation skills for doggies doing Agility – the Two On Two Off or Contacts training.
Two on Two off. Tippy board in the house.
Having a small dog, one of the foundations skills I just didn’t worry about was the contact training. As Jaxon gets faster and more confident, however, I’m realising that this really is a necessary part of our training, and something we should at least cover the basics of.
June Trial report – TITLE!!!!!!!!!!!
Are you ready Mum??
I imagine it to be like one of those Brazilian soccer callers when we cross the line…..”TITLEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
OK, so it wasn’t quite like that. And our title run came out of a run that could have been disastrous.
Post Goulburn Trial report
We went back to trialling on the weekend. It was a 2 day event with the Goulburn club in country New South Wales.
While the weather was slated to be freezing cold and wet, it was actually beautiful. We had cooler weather than Sydney, but not freezing. The rain held off until Sunday afternoon, and wasn’t too bad when it did arrive.
Are we there yet?
Workout Wednesday – Target practice
Getting back into club has been fun after a long break for both Jaxon & I. I’ve found that it’s given us some time to settle down our training, and approach it from a different attitude.
I’m also loving the One Mind method, and how much smoother this is in the run. Jaxon has been learning the new moves with me for a few months now, and I can see that is starting to pay off.
While rain didn’t help his distraction cause on the weekend, we did have a lot of fun doing some foundation work on obstacle focus.
Discovery Monday – Running with other dogs
We’re quietly anticipating the upcoming World Agility Open Championships in Italy. There’s a great team going from Australia, and I was wondering how they were going to get their dogs all the way to Italy, then back again with Quarantine times etc.
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